Glenn Loughran is an artist and educator born in Belfast, N.Ireland 1973. After studying Art and Design at The Ulster University in 1991 Loughran emigrated to the U.S for six years before returning to Ireland. On return he enrolled at Dun Laoghaire College of Art Design Technology, and received a Diploma in Fine Art (2002). He went on to complete a B.A in Fine Art Painting 2003 and an M.A in Sculpture at N.C.A.D 2005, completing his doctorate at the Graduate School Of Creative Arts and Media (GradCAM) in 2013.

Alongside this educational trajectory Loughran worked across two fields of practice, one focused on informal education, the other as an artist working within the framework of participatory art. The experiences of informal education were developed in disadvantaged communities throughout Dublin, and were influenced by discourses on critical pedagogy. The experiences of artistic practice were developed in ‘void’ urban spaces, and were influenced by post-structuralist theory and recent discourses on socially engaged art.

The doctoral research developed through GradCAM and the NCAD formed a hybrid of these practices around the concept of the event. This research was explored in a practice based project called the hedgeschoolproject, represented through the following website: http://eventaleducation.tumblr.com/

Research interests include: Artistic education, the politics of participation in contemporary arts practices, post-structuralist theory in artistic education, social movements and education.

Research Interests

Evental Education and the Hedgeschoolproject

Re-thinking informal pedagogies through the lens of the ‘event’.

The recent shift in artistic practice towards education re-considers the visual arts as an experimental space for imagining a non-state, non-institutional link between pedagogy and artistic practice[1]. This shift has emerged simultaneously with the turn in higher education towards innovation and creativity. Between the innovation turn in higher education and the pedagogical turn in artistic discourse, ‘state’ and ‘non-state’ forms of education have developed. This research analyses two theoretical positions within the context of these discourses: one is the theory of ‘human capital’ and the other is the theory of the ‘event’. Arguing against a ‘pedagogy of human capital’, towards a theory of ‘evental education’, this enquiry is tested and proofed in the hedgeschoolproject.

The hedgeschoolproject names the practical investigations which formed the context of this research. Inspired by the popular education orientation of the historical Irish hedge school and informed by participatory art practices, the hedgeschoolproject operated as an intervention in three iterations between 2006 and 2012. In each iteration the hedgeschoolproject engaged with disadvantaged or marginalised learners in facilitating participant-led education.

Engaging with the emancipatory ‘trace’ of the hedge school movement, the hedgeschoolproject re-signifies the idea of the hedge school as an exploration of ‘evental education’ by considering the principles upon which such a concept of education could be based and the characteristic features that distinguish such an education from the human-capital rhetoric that dominates global educational discourse.